People have used paper maps for thousands of years to determine how to travel from one location to another. In more recent times, people have used paper maps to navigate across and within cities, and to find desired residences or businesses.
With the advent of computers, map applications have been developed which display an electronic map on a display device such as the monitor of a computer. The map application typically includes some type of user interface which allows the user to manipulate operations of the map application. This manipulation of the operations of the map application typically involves using a variety of devices such as a keyboard, a mouse, a touch pad, a stylus, a touch screen, and so on.
Map applications can be employed in various endeavors such as navigation, urban planning, reconnaissance, geographic information systems (GIS), and so on. Map applications enable the user to perform various operations such as, but not limited to zooming in or out of the displayed map, generating or requesting navigational directions, and changing which regions of a map are viewed on the display device (also known as “panning”). Various other operations of the map application are also often user-controllable.